If the results of this summer’s NFL Agent Exam aren’t provided to test-takers this week (specifically, tomorrow), it won’t be long until they are (agent fees are due Oct. 1). With that in mind, the business is changing faster than ever, and I wanted to give my advice with the hope that it is beneficial to the newest agent class.

Here goes.

• If you pass the exam, give yourself credit for that. The agent test got immeasurably harder in 2015, and it’s a true challenge now, no matter what anyone says. You should also give yourself credit for being among the few who actually pursued certification rather than those in the “one of these days” group.
• Do not, under any circumstances, quit your day job. You will need those funds, plus the sanity of an anonymous, stable, ordered profession, to keep you on course while you build out your agency practice.
• Proceed as if you don’t want to get hired by a big firm, because unless (a) you have a direct familial relationship with a player rated Day 1/Day 2 in a coming draft class, or you (b) have a six-figures investor willing to finance a firm, you are probably not going to get hired. There are just too many others in line ahead of you, and the line’s not getting shorter. 
• It’s natural to want to swing for the fences, but you’ll need to be realistic about expectations. As I discussed this week at Inside the League, the number of firms that really have a crack at the difference-makers in each draft class is shrinking. For the most part, the top 100 players in the draft are already spoken for months, sometimes years, before the draft due to NIL representaton.
• Name, image and likeness have changed the game in other ways, too. For one, we’re seeing more first-year contract advisors who are adept at the business, as evidenced by the number of new agents who had clients in the Senior Bowl and the fact that we saw so many rookie contract advisors with players drafted or signed to 90-man rosters. That used to be unheard of, but many agents today pass the exam with a number of relationships with players already locked in. 
• Meanwhile, the expectations of those players are higher than ever. I realize you may be coming into the industry without a lot of money, hoping to beat the odds by finding a humble but highly talented diamond in the rough somewhere in the country. However, that’s a true rarity these days as the better players — even the Day 3 types — have been recruited all their lives not just by top college programs but also agencies eager to build a relationship before these players become recognizable names. 
• For the most part, every agent class is made up three types of people. The first is youngish people, usually with limited resources, who have wanted to be agents all their lives. The second is more established people, usually attorneys, who are middle-aged, bored and looking for a new challenge and some excitement. The third is the growing body of NIL agents seeking to turn their marketing clients into NFL clients. 
• The temptation is going to be to think that you can succeed in the business by spending minimal dollars. Given the forces at work in today’s game, I guess that depends on how you define success. If you simply aim to sign a player, that won’t be a problem. However, signing a player with a reasonable chance of making it to a 90-man roster is considerably harder. You’ll simply have to spend money, and generally tens of thousands of dollars, to get from NFLPA-certified contract advisor to actual representing an NFL player. I recognize that this is the very least popular thing I’m writing, and the least-believed thing I tell people. It’s still true. 
• The NFLPA is not your friend. In all honesty, more often than not, it will be your adversary. It’s called the NFL Players Association, not the NFL Agents Association, for a reason. In the NFLPA’s defense, truly providing a policing body that can enforce the rules would be a near-Herculean task anyway. If you reach out to the NFLPA and someone returns your call or email within a week, count that as a big victory.
• On the other hand, we’re moving ever-closer to a seismic shift in the business related to how players get paid, how the business is regulated, and when and how players go to the pros. No one really knows when this will take place or how it will manifest, but the dollars are just too great and soon a major entity will try to provide some guardrails, some way of regulating things. That’s a good and bad thing, but either way, it’s a major variable that’s out there, somewhere on the horizon. 

There are a few free or low-cost things you can do to become a student of the business. 

• Register for our weekly newsletter, the Friday Wrap.
• Check out our YouTube page, which has lots of videos on scouting and player representation, many of them given by me.
• Give the Scouting the League Podcast a listen, not just because I co-host it, but because it’s a weekly deep dive into the business side of football.
• Pick up my second book, Scout Speak, for a real understanding of how NFL scouting works.

Good luck! I look forward to working with you, and I wish you great success in football.

After working with hundreds of this year’s aspiring agents over a period of several months, I’ve got a few thoughts. Let me start with the actual content of the exam.

We got a lot of feedback on this year’s exam from the participants, and there were some pretty offbeat questions. For example, one dealt with how an agent should respond when a player faces discipline because he punched his coach in the face on the sideline of a game, knocking him out cold. There was also a question about how often an ex-player could obtain a brain/body scan on the NFLPA’s dime once he’s retired. Several questions dealt with benefits and how players could obtain them once they left the league.

While these are, technically, the kinds of things agents need to know, most people told us they expected more testing on the bread-and-butter issues contract advisors have to face. It’s possible, even likely, that the NFLPA is trying to be elusive in what it tests on as a way of keeping the number of new agents manageable. Right now, there are 994 agents, which is 200-300 more than pre-Covid. We’ll see those numbers sink drastically once the three-year rule catches up to the surging number of new agents who came aboard after 2020, when there was no exam. However, the NFLPA is probably trying to do its part to cull the herd preemptively. 

We’ll make a few adjustments to try to give our clients an edge, as we always have. Next year’s program will look different. We’ll continue getting feedback to make sure we’re providing the service we need to provide.

Here are a few more notes.

• If you’re eager to get started on player representation and the work of identifying your next client, but can’t until you know you’ve passed the exam, read this piece I wrote a couple years ago. It gives you a few things to work on so you can hit the ground running.
• We’re still polishing our “agent school” that will be offered in the fourth quarter of the year, once results are out. We’ll have a formal rundown of our Zoom schedule, as well as pricing, in this space in the coming weeks.
• By the way, you can expect your results in around four weeks. The NFLPA likes to give test-takers about a month to round up the funds for dues and liability insurance, and that deadline is Oct. 1, so sit tight. You’ve got about a month to wait.
• We’ll have more in today’s Friday Wrap. As always, it’s free, and must reading for people in the industry. Register for it here.

Monday is a really big day for the 350 or so people taking the 2024 NFL Agent Exam. We’ve been working with a lot of people since January, and those are just first-time test-takers. For those people who’ve come up short previously, the journey has been much longer.

It got me thinking about what they would say in 2029, when they are five years into their agent career. Will they still think it was worth it? This is especially poignant for those contract advisors entering the business without the benefit of being part of a big firm. Their road is much tougher. Will they have any regrets?

To find out, I asked several members of the 2019 agent class who entered the business as independents. Are the hours, the blood/sweat/tears, the dollars invested, worth it? Maybe the surest indication of how sold-out for their careers they are is that I texted 12 agents at about midnight EST and got responses back from half of them within 10 minutes. It’s that kind of business. Sleep is certainly secondary.

At any rate, I expected them to say they had no regrets, and that’s pretty much what I got back. Here are some of their responses.

• “Yes, I would. I feel like I am finally hitting my stride and have definitely learned more this time than during my previous certification period. I am glad I re-certified.”
• “I’d absolutely do it again. Being in our shoes puts us in position to play a significant role in positively impacting the lives of the young men we come across, and ultimately their families. It’s a damn tough business. But there’s nothing more satisfying than seeing the joy on our guys’ and their families’ faces when they get their opportunities. . . Some people go a lifetime and never find their niche or that thing that really motivates them. Football is it for me.”
• “Yes, I would continue to be NFLPA certified. I have several coaches, and being NFLPA-certified allows me to not only represent athletes, but also gives me the ability to speak with my coaches about the rapid rule changes from a place of authority and knowledge. Football at every level has evolved with this new landscape in the post-pandemic era. Not everyone survived, and the world of recruitment for athletes is just different; the transfer portal is now significantly relevant. . . Yes, I would still become NFLPA-certified but I would look at the landscape with a more balanced perspective understanding that athletes have more autonomy now and the game has evolved both on the field and off the field.”
• “Yes I would do it again. It was the career I’ve always wanted to pursue and my goal since I realized playing professionally wasn’t an option!”
• “If I were asked if I’d do it again, I’d definitely say yes. The experience of navigating the complexities of the sports industry, negotiating contracts, and advocating for my clients during the pandemic has not only sharpened my skills but also made me more resilient and strategic. The challenges I faced and overcame have made me stronger and more effective in representing and supporting my clients.”
• “I feel like God has led me into this, so yes, I’d do it again for sure. I’ll always follow His lead.”
• “I’d say that, while it wasn’t how I expected the last 5 years to go, I’d definitely do it all over again.”
• “Absolutely! I would for sure do it again and I did! I was first certified in 2008 for a number of years. Got certified for a specific player and then he was injured. In 2019, I got certified for a specific player and of course he did not sign with me by the time it was done. Lesson learned — certify for a player at your own risk. If you are doing it because you love football and helping people there is nothing like it! That’s what kept me in it.” 

You better be passionate to endure in this industry, as you can see from the responses, everyone I asked still has that fire. If you’re one of Monday’s test-takers, I hope you are similarly inspired to pass a really difficult exam. I encourage you to take advantage of exam preparation materials, and we can help with that. For more information on how, make sure you read our Friday Wrap newsletter. You can register for it here.